ABSTRACT
Adopting the perspective that games are social practices and focusing on how participants “actively collaborate in constructing the game of the moment” (e.g., Goodwin, 1995), this study investigates game playing in a first-grade classroom. The phrase “the game of the moment” highlights the fluid and co-constructed nature of game playing that results in different forms of the game being constructed by different users in different settings. I am interested in the following questions: What is game playing intended by design and by the teacher’s rules? What kinds of “game of the moment” are constructed? How do participants construct these games of the moment?
